ous equity seems to have prevailed in the manifestations of these Infinites, since each modern nation has one, and only one. Germany, indeed, stands in a category apart. The Homer of Germany is Beethoven. The author of 'Faust,' it seems, is not thought so full or so exalted a representative of German literature as Rabelais is of French literature. We should have anticipated that Faust' would have won the sympathies and admiration of the author of 'Les Légendes.' Is it possible that a certain criticism which long ago issued from Weimar, and which was heard all over Europe, could have influenced him in this high office of filling the thrones of the Immortals? Further on there are some severe strictures on the impassive Goethe, as he is sometimes called, which might justify a passing suspicion of this kind. However that may be, he pronounces that "music is the verb of Germany;" an oracular sentence, which has at least all the mystery proper to an oracle.

We must leave untouched the several panegyrics written on these fourteen sublimities which Victor Hugo has selected out of all literature, ancient and modern. We proceed to the chapters entitled Art and Science. Here the leading idea is indisputably true. A cry of anguish or of joy shall go down through all the generations of mankind; the poet of the earliest age will be intelligible to the poet of the latest. But the science of one age may be unintelligible or nonsensical to succeeding ages. Our author scorns the notion that poetry is extinct. It is as if one said, "There are no more roses; spring has breathed its last; the sun has lost the habit of rising; roam about all the fields of the earth, you will not find a butterfly; there is no more light in the moon, and the nightingale sings no more; the Alps and the Pyrenees are gone; there are no more lovely girls and handsome youths; and no one thinks any more of the graves, and the mother

no longer loves her child, and the human heart is dead." Not only poetry lives, but the poet is immortal; while the man of science who was an oracle in his own age, is thrown aside by that very advance of knowledge to which he himself perhaps contributed.

"We no longer teach" (we quote the following passage as an instance-and one such instance will suffice-of that outrageous prolixity and pedantry which our author can sometimes be guilty of) of Ptolemy, the geography of Strabo, the .66 we no longer teach the astronomy climatology of Cleostratus, the zoology of Pliny, the algebra of Diophantus, the medicine of Tribunus, the surgery of Ronsil, the dialectics of Sphærus, the myology of Steno, the uranology of Tatius, the stenography of Trimethius, the pisciculture of Sebastien de Medici, the Tartaglia, the chronology of Scaliger, the arithmetic of Stifels, the geometry of meteorology of Stoffler, the anatomy of Gassendi, the pathology of Fernel, the jurisprudence of Robert Barmne, the agriculture of Quesnay, the hydrography of

Bouguer, the nautics of Bourde de the veterinary practice of Garsault, the Villehuet, the ballistics of Gribeauval, architectonics of Desgodets, the botany of Tournefort, the scholasticism of Abelard, the politics of Plato, the mechanics of Aristotle, the physics of Descartes, the theology of Stillingfleet: we taught yesterday, we teach to-day, we shall teach to-morrow, we shall teach for ever, the Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles."

All these learned names and learned words to tell us that the knowledge of one age is not the knowledge of another! Gigantic prolixity! Does the reader wish an instance of that profound obscurity into which, we have said, our author also occasionally falls? we will take one from the same portion of the book. Here is something about the common origin of art and science. Profound obscurities are generally translatable, if translatable at all, into some bold commonplace. That may be the case in the present instance. But we will leave the passage to the ingenuity of our readers:

"There can be but one law; the unity of law results from the unity of essence; nature and art are the two sides of the same fact." (The starting-point seems

clear and good; we prick up our ears to listen.) And in principle, saving the restriction which we shall indicate very shortly, the law of one is the law of the other. The angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence" (we begin to grow giddy). All being equity in the moral order and equilibrium in the material order, all is equation in the intellectual order" (we lose consciousness, and the reader must peruse by himself what follows). "The binomial theorem, that marvel fitting everything, is included in poetry not less than in algebra. Nature plus humanity, raised to the second power, gives art. That is the intellectual binomial theorem. Now explain this, A+ B, by the number special to each great artist and each great poet, and you will have, in its multiple, phy siognomy, and in its strict total, each of

the creations of the human mind. What

more beautiful than the variety of chefsdruere resulting from the unity of law! Poetry, like science, has an abstract root; science springs out of that, the chefs-d'œuvre of metal, wood, fire, or air, machine, ship, locomotive, aeroscaph; poetry springs out of that, the chefs druvre of flesh and blood, 'Iliad,' 'Canticle of Canticles,' Romance,' 'Divine Comedy,' 'Macbeth.'"

No great writer, we may remark en passant, whom we know anything of, seems to be so utterly destitute of the scientific spirit as Victor Hugo. From the relationship or contrast of art and science he proceeds to discourse of the generation of those great souls we distinguish as men of genius. Of course, in such a subject there is nothing to be done but to ask questions which no one can answer. But even in asking unanswerable questions there may be some method displayed. A man may, we know, discourse of souls and atoms very wildly, and yet pass for sane. Did any one, however, ever take such liberties with these obscure entities as Victor Hugo in the following passage ?—

"The production of souls is the secret of the unfathomable depth. The innate, what a shadow! (quelle ombre!) What is that concentration of the unknown which takes place in the darkness, and where abruptly bursts forth that light, a genius? What is the law of these events? O Love! The human heart does its work on earth, and that moves the great deep.

What is that incomprehensible meeting of material sublimation and moral sublimation in the atom, indivisible if looked at from life, incorruptible if looked at from death? The atom, what a marvel! No dimension, no extent, nor height, nor width, nor thickness, independent of every possible measure; and yet everything in this nothing! For algebra, the geometrical point. For philosophy, a soul. As a geometrical point, the basis of science; as a soul, the basis of faith. Such is the atomi.'

As bearing probably on the origin of great souls, he points to such coincidences as these-that Newton was born in the same year in which Galileo died, that Cervantes and Shakespeare died in the same year; he points to these as coincidences to be studied, in the hope of attaining from them some scientific law. He speaks of " men of genius communicating by their effluvia like the stars." He is fond of this effluvia, but whether it is a scientific or poetic expression we will not undertake to say. The method of induction is no great favourite of his; he has more faith in meditation or reverie. Yes," he says, "let us meditate on these vast obscurities. The characteristic of reverie is, to gaze at darkness so intently that it brings light out of it."

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After this investigation, or inquiry, about souls, Shakespeare again emerges on us, and we have a criticism on the poet. This criticism constitutes but a small portion of the work, and is not, we think, the most striking portion. The chapters where he discourses generally upon genius, and where the author gives scope to his eloquence on the general subject of the progress of mankind, are those to which we should look for specimens of his happier vein. But there is an ardent and generous admiration in this part of the book which pleases, even though it may be excessive and indiscriminating. Accept all! accept this great mind of Shakespeare!-it is "an ocean!" it is "a world!" Good. But if one knows that a world must have all sorts of disagreeable as well as agreeable

things in it, this hinders not that we distinguish between them. The puddle, and the weed, and the rank swamp may form part of the sublimest scene one knows; they may even belong to that very wildness that charm us; but they cannot be individually attractive: one must wish they had not been there. No; we are not afraid, as M. Victor Hugo objects to the lovers of "sobriety," of too great a profusion of what is beautiful. "Henceforth," he says, "the rose-tree shall be compelled to count its roses. The prairie shall be requested not to be so prodigal of daisies; the spring shall be ordered to restrain itself. The nests are rather too prolific. The groves are too rich in songsters. The Milky Way must moderate the profusion of its stars-they are very numerous." Too many roses, too many stars, we know of no one who has complained of.

At such a time as this, when foreigners as well as natives are shouting a hymn of triumph to our great dramatist, it would be discordant, out of season, and altogether vain, to attempt a candid estimate of the defects as well as merits of Shakespeare. Indeed, we have felt, any time this last twenty years, that it was impossible to say a temperate word on our great national poet. It was not enough to admire all his well-known excellences, his fertility of invention, his powerful expression of the various passions of mankind, his tenderness and poetic imagination, which so often fling a lyric into the dialogue, and make of some single speech a perfect poem of itself. It was not enough to recognise the marvellous union of thought, passion, and imagination there was in this man. We were required to see the consummate artist in all he did, and a perfect consistency in all the characters he delineated, or at least in the characters of his chief plays. The English language reached its climax in the happiest efforts of Shakespeare; sentences more lucid, more melodious, more laden with

meaning, direct and indirect, and yet more simple (flowing easily, like a river in the light), never were composed. But our Shakespeare had two styles, and, what is strange, he seems to have prided himself as much on one as the other. Such involved construction, such distraction of conflicting metaphors, such elaborate obscurity, such extravagant thought, as well as violent and distorted diction, as we sometimes meet with, has hardly a parallel in any other writer. This also is as peculiar to him as his exquisite transparency and purity of speech. Our Shakespeare revolves before us, like the earth itself, half in light, half in darkness. But we may say this of the earth, not of Shakespeare: in his case we must not admit the night.

There has been, in particular, a sort of study of the characters of Shakespeare, which appears to us quite preposterous; as if we had the facts of nature or history before us, and not the utterances of a dramatist on whom the exigencies of the stage, and the necessity to amuse an audience, were constantly pressing. Some of our most distinguished critics proceed on the supposition that Shakespeare, before writing his dialogue, formed for himself a complete conception of the character he was about to portray. It is this conception the critic has to seize upon and secure. Now, we venture to assert that it is very seldom that any dramatist has proceeded in this manner. We feel persuaded that Shakespeare did not. He took some well-known story, and the inevitable passions of the agents in it, and by developing these a character was necessarily developed also. But the character was the result of the story and the passion; it was no separate preconception. The story was not invented to display the character, but the story was there, and the character grew out of it, and was made to accommodate itself to all its turns and windings. Shakespeare never seems to have given himself the

trouble to think whether the men and women he brought upon the stage, and to whom he gave his marvellous dialogue, or whether any human beings whatever, could have acted in the manner which his story says they did. He does not ask himself whether King Lear, unless he were already mad, could have made the distribution of his kingdom which the story relates, and, for no offence whatever, have banished his beloved Cordelia from his affections. He found all this in the story, adopts it without hesitation, and, starting from this gross improbability, he proceeds to throw his whole soul into the passion of Lear. And by so doing this master of human passion has produced a tragedy, or at least a tragic personage, of the very grandest order. We are all borne irresistibly away by the rage and anguish of Lear; but if we persist in the attempt to form some conception of a man who could have done and said all that King Lear said and did in the play, we shall never succeed. Shakespeare had troubled himself to form no such conception.

It sometimes happens that Shakespeare, by throwing the wealth of his own highly reflective mind on the characters he portrays, produces an incongruity between them and the actions which, according to the story, he has to ascribe to them. He takes up the story of a Moor who marries a Christian lady, and who puts her to death with his own hands in a fit of jealousy. There is nothing improbable in this. But as our poet proceeds to develop the plot, he gives to Othello so many noble sentiments, animates him with so pure and tender a love, approximates him so closely to the ideal standard of a high-minded European (who, if he is jealous, kills the man who has wronged him, but not the woman), that the action of Othello becomes as incongruous as it is revolting. So stately a form does Othello assume under the hands of Shakespeare, that some of our refining critics have

determined that he was not even a jealous man-not jealous by temperament-that he yielded to overwhelming evidence. Coleridge, we believe, started this last subtlety of interpretation; so that Coleridge, and the critics who follow him, must have brought themselves to the conclusion that when, with this story before him, Shakespeare sat down to write his drama of 'Othello,' he intended to portray the character of a Moor not jealous by temperament!

Our most ingenious critics have differed in their interpretations of such characters as Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and others. Is it likely that this would be the case if the poet had formed for himself some one definite conception to which he had studiously adhered? But it is what would inevitably happen if the poet, starting from the point of view his story gave him, allowed himself afterwards full scope in expressing whatever passions or sentiments the various scenes or situations of the play suggested. The character being, as it were, the final resumé of all the eloquence, or wit, or pathos, which the poet had gathered round it during the five acts, could hardly fail to offer incongruities which ingenious men would explain or resolve each after his own fashion.

Was Macbeth a cruel man? Was he a tyrant by temperament? Was he superstitious? Had he that overweening pride which, in common parlance, is dignified with the name of ambition? How far was he led to the murder of Duncan by the prophecy of the witches?-how far by the incentives of his diabolical wife? Questions like these our analytic school of critics agitate, and on the solution of such questions they bring to bear those noble and pathetic speeches which, especially towards the close of the drama, Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Macbeth. But the almost tender eloquence which the poet takes this opportunity to utter, and the murder which only a savage

could commit, are simply incompatible. Shift your point of view how you will, you can never get these in the same line of vision, so as to harmonise them together. The Macbeth of the story, and the Macbeth who utters Shakespeare's thoughts, are not to be reconciled. But the pleasure of the reader is, after all, very little disturbed by this incongruity, because, in fact, it is the Macbeth who speaks and thinks who absorbs our attention, and this to such a degree that it is the murderer, and not the sons of the murdered Duncan, to whom we give our sympathies: no one has a horror of Macbeth. We admit the justice of his fate, but regret it at the same time.

"I

It is on the character of Hamlet above all that our subtilising critics have laboured most pertinaciously. Two men of pre-eminent genius, Coleridge and Goethe, have here set the example. set about," says Goethe, speaking through Wilhelm Meister—“I set about investigating every trace of Hamlet's character, as it had shown itself before his father's death. I endeavoured to distinguish what in it was independent of this mournful event; independent of the terrible events that followed; and what most probably the young man would have been had no such thing occurred." A very unprofitable mode of study, we should say. Goethe, who was himself a dramatist, must have very well known that Shakespeare never thought of any other Hamlet than the Hamlet who saw the ghost of his murdered father, and who undertook to revenge his death. Goethe's description of the character of Hamlet has been very generally received as accurate; it could not fail to be accurate in some points; it could not fail to be itself a vivid and interesting picture; but it will satisfy the reader only while he confines himself to just such recollections of Shakespeare's play as the critic skilfully awakens. Any one who, after some interval,

takes down his Shakespeare from the shelf, and, without any preconception, reads through the play of Hamlet,' will have before him something very different from the pensive and refined portraitures of either Coleridge or Goethe. Both rest far too much on the indecision or want of will that so often accompanies the habit of meditative thought. Goethe says, "To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it." Hamlet is no doubt the meditative man; he is a melancholy man. Shakespeare has clad him in the sombre garment of his own solitary thoughts; but he certainly does not represent him as a weak man, as one generally incapable of action. There is one conspicuous passage in which he chides himself for his delay, but procrastination of such an act as he had to perform is in itself no sign of habitual indecision or irresolution; on the contrary, a very resolute man as well as a very weak man might be found under such circumstances chiding himself for delay, and girding himself up for action. Hamlet is described throughout as very capable of action, of very violent action, and, what is more, of being very little troubled by delicate scruples of conscience. He sees the arras stir, and whips out his rapier and runs the king, as he thinks, through the body. The action is quick and decided enough, and when he drags forth the old Polonius and discovers his mistake, he has not a word of remorse.

"Thon wretched, rash, intruding fool,

farewell!